


Like a Lonely House

by wynnebat



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Allison Lives, Future Fic, M/M, M/M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Multi, Past Chris Argent/Peter Hale, Pre-Poly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 20:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5262149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnebat/pseuds/wynnebat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris hates Allerdale University quite a lot for someone who has its logo on the back of his car.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Lonely House

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "estrangement" square of my [Hurt/Comfort Bingo](http://hc-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) card. Title from Pablo Neruda's [Sonnet LXV](https://goddessriss.wordpress.com/2014/05/09/sonnet-lxv-pablo-neruda-i-wait-for-you-like-a-lonely-house/), which has some truly awesome turns of phrase. 
> 
> Also, I may have watched Crimson Peak recently, hence the silly references.

It's nine in the evening on a Tuesday when Chris parks his car in the parking lot of a bar. The Crimson Peak is a couple miles out of town, on the way back from a supply run Chris occasionally makes to buy wolfsbane. He's never been inclined to step foot in it in the nearly four years he's lived in Beacon Hills, but it's just that kind of night. There aren't many people inside, and nearly none of whom Chris recognizes. None who'll start a fight with him, anyway. The man sitting at the bar doesn't turn around, but Chris' pride won't let him leave now that he knows Chris is here. He grabs a seat beside him and orders three drinks straight up.

"Rough day?" Peter asks from the stool next to his. He's dressed far too lightly for the cold fall weather, not bothering to pretend humanity now that the pack's mostly left town for college.

Chris grunts. He's familiar with Peter—too familiar, by now, both biblically and familiar with his insides after stabbing him—but he's not about to share his troubles. "Need a drink. What're you doing here?"

"I come here every so often. It's never had your scent."

"First time."

"Interesting." Peter's voice is, damnedly, interested.

Chris hates how it ignites a bit of a fire even after all these years. A decade and a coma and a marriage later and he still remembers the way Peter used to kiss when they were twenty-two. The bartender slides his drinks over. Chris downs one, then another, and nurses the third. It's not the smartest choice, drinking here with an occasionally sociopathic werewolf, nor one his daughter would approve of, but to disapprove she'd actually have to call him.

But Chris knows Peter well, and this isn't him in a good one, no matter what he pretends. "What's got you in a mood?"

"I'd rather not speak of it."

Despite it, Peter's always been more chatty than him, and with the alcohol's heat, Chris doesn't mind some conversation. He welcomes it, even. Victoria's dead and Allison's been in college two months and the last proper conversation he had was with a murderous kelpie before he managed to stab it through the heart.

Three drinks and an argument about proper footwear at a funeral (Chris thinks Peter shouldn't even have a stance on it, never having had to attend one) later, Peter must be feeling polite, because he asks, "And you?"

"Don't want to talk about it, either," Chris replies, even if he kind of does. He's got his pride, after all.

Peter snorts. "Fine. My idiot boyfriend nearly blew himself up practicing a healing spell."

Peter's voice is quiet, and not only because they're in a bar full of people not in the know. Magic, real magic, is rare among their kind. It's the sort of thing one talks about in closed rooms, not in the open. But Peter would know if anyone's paying them any attention, so Chris assumes they're unnoticed. And then he thinks about Peter's words, about the possibility of yet another person Peter cares about going up in flames, and calls for another round of drinks on his own tab.

Chris gulps down the rest of his drink and lets the burn in his throat make him speak. "Allison hasn't called in two weeks. She's fine. Busy. Sends texts every couple days. She just hasn't picked up when I've called her."

His shoulders are tense, and he's all but daring Peter to say shit. Chris has a gun with wolfsbane bullets at his side and Peter has a lot of exposed flesh.

But Peter only says, airily, "My daughter still hasn't called home. I imagine it's been a month since I've talked to her."

Chris rolls his eyes. "Your daughter's stomping around in a rainforest with the rest of the Hales. She doesn't even have service. And it's not a competition."

"But if it were, Malia would be winning."

It's not a competition, because there'll never be a competition when it comes to which one of them is the better father. Chris raised Allison; Peter never truly got his chance.

Peter's particular brand of comfort is dripping a potent but not harmful strand of wolfsbane into their glasses. They'll be drunk in minutes. The only allowance he makes for Chris' humanity is a slightly smaller dose. Chris wouldn't have it any other way, even if within an hour, the bartender calls up Peter's boyfriend because they're being too rowdy.

Chris isn't surprised when it's Stiles who appears. He can't imagine himself actually dating someone so young, but Peter, well. Peter's moral compass has never found a north.

"If you wouldn't mind dropping me off—"

Stiles doesn't even entertain the thought. "In our guest room, yeah, because I know what that shit does. I can't have Peter poisoning more people with wolfsbane."

Chris asks about who else Peter slipped it to, but Stiles' answer washes over his head. Stiles has a nice voice, even and deep. It's changed since Chris first met him.

"You've definitely had too much to drink. Let's go, both of you."

Chris half expects Peter to drape over Stiles, but it seems Peter's mind is still on the past. They walk half slumped on each other, stumbling through the parking lot and into Stiles' jeep. In the backseat, Peter's head ends up in Chris' lap, and Stiles rolls his eyes. Chris tries to explain things—he's not about to try to interfere with Stiles and Peter, no matter how many times Peter'd tried to sabotage Chris and Victoria in that first year—but the thoughts don't make enough sense in his head to even speak.

Soon enough, Peter pats him on the back and leaves him in the guest bedroom with an, "You're still a better father than I am," and a touch that lingers a little too much.

But then there are voices in the next room, and Stiles' laughter, and the sounds of sex, and Chris is dead to the world.

.

The hangover, as usual with wolfsbane-spiked drinks, is hellish. For the first couple minutes of the morning, Chris doesn't even move. He hears the sounds of someone getting up outside his room, but they're quiet, and he can't muster the energy to make his way home.

He checks his cell phone without much hope.

No new text messages. No new calls.

He remembers being eighteen and high-tailing out of the little town he grew up in, going off to a university two states away and calling his folks twice a month. He'd visited even less often. Maybe this is just karma for his own actions, but... Too much had happened for his and Allison's relationship to be the same as the one Chris had with his parents. He doesn't want it to turn into something as cold and distant as that, but they've never been talkers, him and Allison. And his kid's growing up into her own person.

Chris worries anyway. Allerdale University, Allison had described, is amazing. "It's got the highest percentage of supernatural creatures out of all the colleges in the states," she'd said.

"How do you even know these things?" he'd asked.

"Stiles," Allison had said. "He knows everything."

Chris had only sighed and asked her if she was really sure. And now she's gone and loves it there, so much that he's barely gotten more than a couple minutes of conversation in two months. He half wishes Allison had taken a gap year for the Argents' hunter training, like Stiles had decided to with his emissary training. The information had been in the back of his mind, but now Chris realizes that maybe, Stiles had another reason to stay.

The thought just makes him feel tired, so Chris pushes himself out of bed. After a quick trip to the bathroom, he follows the smell of coffee into the kitchen, where Stiles is already sitting at the table and working on a tablet.

"Morning," Chris says, his voice a little hoarse.

"Hey. Feeling better?"

"It's not the first time," Chris replies.

"Still. Help yourself to the coffee."

He's never said no to coffee, so Chris walks over to the coffeemaker and pours himself a cup. He takes a sip from a cup covered in cat images, wondering whether the cup was Stiles' or Peter's first. It's a very short sip, followed by only one thought: _what the fuck_.

"Is this even coffee?" slips out without Chris even meaning to.

"Fuck off," Stiles says, companionably. "If you wanted _good_ coffee, you should've made it yourself."

Usually, Chris tries not to commandeer his one night stands' appliances—and even without sex having happened, that's exactly what this feels like—but today, he walks over and unapologetically pours Stiles' brew down the drain. It takes ten minutes to brew a proper pot of coffee. When Chris takes a careful sip, it's not bad. He can't imagine what Stiles did to ruin it. After a couple long sips, the old taste fades.

Then, for good measure, he pours another cup and walks over to replace Stiles' barely begun cup of coffee with a new one. It's practically a public service.

Stiles reaches for it before Chris can place it on the table, wrapping his hands around the mug and Chris' hand. It's the first deliberate bit of contact he's had in a while, not counting Peter's easy touches the night before, and Chris suddenly wants a little too much. Maybe, he understands Peter a little better. Stiles watches him with dark eyes and a smile that says thanks and something else.

"Thanks," Stiles says, adjusting his grip just enough for Chris to pull away. "I usually mooch off Peter, but he's sleeping in."

Chris sits down at the table, shaking his head to Stiles' subsequent offer of food. He's not sure he can handle it.

"You're not going to ask what's with me and Peter?" Chris eventually asks. If he were Stiles, he'd be wondering. It's not that he and Peter have been at each other's necks, but they've never been this chummy in Stiles' presence.

"You mean the two of you actually getting along after trying to kill each other a couple times?"

Chris nods.

"You two used the fuck," Stiles says, his tone only a little questioning.

Choking a little on his coffee, Chris nods again.

"And it was serious?"

From the other end of the apartment, Peter yells, "I certainly thought so!"

"Private conversation," Chris calls back, though it's not, really. "And, yeah. Years ago, in our early twenties, we used to date."

"You were the one to call it off?" Stiles guesses.

"I wanted to get married to someone who wasn't an asshole," Chris says, ignoring Peter's wounded sounds.

"I figure that's good advice." Turning toward the door, Stiles adds, "We have coffee if you want to stop being melodramatic and join us."

Chris snorts. "Of course, a year later, I met Victoria and gave in to the fact that I have a type." It's been a couple years since his wife's death, and her name makes him wistful, but the constant ache is gone. They'd always been honest with each other; he knows that if she's watching him from up there (or, after the life they used to lead, down there), she wants him to be happy again. Preferably with a nice hunter, but Victoria probably wouldn't roll over in her grave if he strayed outside the community. Maybe from the afterlife, she can even accept a dalliance with a werewolf or a mage.

But Chris puts those thoughts out of his head, because his ex has firmly moved on. Even if when Peter finally joins them in the kitchen, Chris has a strange moment of deja vu. If things had worked out differently... But Peter seems happy with Stiles, a boy Chris watched grow into an attractive, capable man, and that's that.

After a kiss to the top of Stiles' head, Peter's first stop is the coffeemaker. Chris nearly laughs when Peter's expressions turns mystified at his first sip.

"This is oddly good," Peter says, sniffing the cup.

"I'm amazing like that," Stiles replies, leaning back in his chair. He accepts a kiss from Peter, then adds, "But it's Chris you should be thanking."

Peter raises an eyebrow, but walks over and presses a similar kiss to Chris' cheek, his mouth warm against Chris' skin. If he turns his head, Chris thinks, the kiss could so easily become a different one.

"I'll settle for words," Chris says instead.

"Not on your life," Peter replies, walking back over to Stiles' side.

There's a look that passes between Stiles and Peter, but Chris pays it no mind. Most couples have something of that kind. Some phrase that triggers an inside joke or a memory, and Chris is just grateful they're not as obsessed with each other as his daughter and her boyfriend are. He's had enough cloying public displays of affection for a lifetime.

He's probably outstayed his welcome, Chris decides. "Either of you mind dropping me off at the bar? I need to pick up my car."

"I'll do it," Stiles offers. "But only if you come over for dinner tonight. My dad's cancelled, and we had plans. We could use a third to eat all the food."

Chris glances toward Peter, who only adds, "We'd like you to come."

It feels a little like a trap, this intent look that's overcome their faces. Chris can't think of anything it could be for, anything it can mean. Anything plausible, anyway. But he supposes he can wait a couple hours to find out what they've got planned.

"Sure," Chris says, and doesn't regret the word even when the two look much too happy to see an old hunter at their table.

With that, Stiles takes him back to the bar. Their conversation is light afterwards in comparison to the heat of the morning, but Chris thinks he needs a break if he's going to be seeing them so soon.

As Chris drives home, his phone rings in a familiar tone.

"Allison," Chris says, accepting the call. "What a surprise."

It really isn't, but Chris doesn't care. Something in his chest uncurls at her voice, and at the fact that he knows exactly who prompted the call. Whatever Peter's newest game is—or Peter and Stiles', and Christ, how terrible for the world it is that Peter's managed to find someone so like himself—Chris rather likes it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Complete; no sequel planned.


End file.
